Page 13 of Bullet
And again.
And again.
For the next couple of weeks, it felt like that was all I was doing. I started out just calling and texting. Everything from sexy innuendos to blocks of text of me trying to explain away why I ghosted him, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually, he blocked me so I couldn’t call or text, and he didn’t have many social media outlets, just one, which I was blocked on before I even got to that method.
Which left showing up at the bar.
The new prospects that the Steel Knights had nominated the first night I went back had the place regularly packed with new people and a fresh, electric energy. Harry wasn’t wrong, more than one man approached me looking to have some fun, but I had to keep my sights set on the prize. I would buy him drinks, try to coax him into a corner with me, even straight-up challenge him to a game of pool or darts, but he flat out ignored me.
Finally, I threw caution to the wind and approached one of the other club members, looking for some advice. I’d heard them calling him Dynamite, and he was closer to being my age than Harry was, not that it made much of a difference.
“Oh, you’re the one who ghosted him?” Dynamite asked.
Word had spread. “I wasn’t trying to,” I lied. “I just got busy and I thought a little push and pull was sexy.”
“Sure, maybe foranyoneelse, but you’re lucky he even went out with you to begin with,” Dynamite explained. “Harry hates women.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Yeah, I know it sounds kind of shitty to just say it like that, but that’s what it is. He has, like,norespect for them. Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t attack them or hurt them or anything, more like he just ignores them.” He took a sip of his beer. “When we heard that he agreed to go out with you, we wereallshocked.”
“I never would have guessed from our date that he didn’t like women.”
Harry did everything from pull out my chair to try and convince me to wait to let him take me home. He was a perfect gentleman. Well, until we got back to his place, then he was perfect in other ways. If he did have a hatred for women, it wasn’t evident that night.
“You got lucky.Reallucky,” Dynamite said. “The fact that he went out with you at all is crazy. He gave you a shot and you blew it, so you can forget about ever talking to him again.”
Harry was sitting at the bar talking to one of the bar’s patrons as I spoke with Dynamite. His broad shoulders and straight jaw were a sight to behold and something about thinking I’d never get to be with him again bothered me.
A lot.
Without saying anything else to Dynamite, I stood up and walked over to where Harry was sitting. I slipped in between him and the person he was talking to, facing the other person. It was an older man, probably Harry’s same age if not a bit older, and there was nothing impressive about his look, but he wasn’t unattractive.
“Hi,” I greeted, setting my hand on his chest. “I’m Celia.”
His eyes nearly bugged out of his skull. He grinned back at me, letting one of his hands come up to skirt along my hip. “Well, hello there. I’m Mark.”
“Mm, Mark,” I replied. “That’s an easy name.”
“Easy?” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied, “to scream.”
Mark’s jaw dropped and he looked all around him before bringing his eyes back to mine. “Am I being pranked or something? Did one of my friends put you up to this? There’s no way you’re real.”
“I’m very real,” I replied. “I’d love to show you.”
“Uh.” Mark downed everything that was left of his beer in one large gulp before slamming the bottle on the bar. “Hell yeah.”
I took Mark’s hand and turned around, but to my shock, Harry was still sitting there, though he had his back turned to me and was speaking to someone else on his other side.
“They could take it all the way this year,” the man he was now talking to, said. “The Suns are looking nice already.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Bucky,” Harry replied in his gruff voice, and it sent a shiver down my spine. I still had dreams about him from that night we were together. That voice in my ear. “I’m gonna go with the Celtics, just like I do every year.”
The other guy, Bucky, laughed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Damn traitor.”
“Let’s go,” Mark said in my ear. “I can barely hold back right now.”
